Criminal (Investigative 'true crime' journalism! Interview heavy. Starts off w/some murders, but quickly moves into bizarre and interesting crimes/law bending. A++++)King Falls AM (Radio hosts dealing with supernatural in small town America, 80:20 comedy/drama + personal favorite)Crimetown (On hiatus rn, but the one available season is an interesting look at Buddy Cianci, super corrupt mayor of Rhode Island w/mob ties)Pod Save the World (US foreign policy hosted by Obama's National Security spokesdude)Stuff You Should Know (Two hosts examining a wide range of topics)Stuff They Don't Want You To Know (Conspiracy nuts, mysteries, etc!)NoSleep (Creepypasta readings)ID1OT with Chris Hardwick (Celebrity interviews)Last Podcast On The Left (Comedians being extremely offensive about crimes, mysteries, etc)Crime in Sports/Small Town Murder (Comedians being extremely fucking offensive about ridiculous crimes)Casefile True Crime (HOSTED BY AN AUSTRALIAN his accent is so good ahhhhhh)Critical Role (D&D played by professional professional voice actors, just started new season)The Vanished (True crime on missing persons)Sword and Scale (Probably the best produced true crime podcast, host prone to overstating things)Thinking Sideways (Irreverent unsolved mysteries)Astonishing Legends (Irreverent unsolved mysteries)Undisclosed (Wrongful convictions)Serial (Wrongful convictions done by investigative journalist Sarah Koening, finished now but really well done)S-Town (Looking into a wrongful conviction, produced by the same team as Serial)Black Tapes (Horror docudrama)

My Current List:Long Form
Adam Ruins Everything - Long form interviews with the experts featured on the show
Hardcore History - LONG podcasts that go in depth into various periods and people in history. A recent "blitz edition" podcast was 6 hours. Be prepared!
Dan Carlin's Common Sense - Political podcast by the Hardcore History host, currently in a bit of hiatus due to, well, you know, while he processes.
Ezra Klein - Long interviews with whoever Ezra Klein wants to interview.

Politics
The Weeds - Podcast from Vox, goes in-depth into the data surrounding the issues.
AEI Banter - From conservative thinktank AEI, if you're interested in classical, non-reactionary conservative thought, it's pretty decent.
538 - From the Website. Focuses on statistics and polls.
Slate's Political Gabfest - General political discussion. Tends to be very even-handed, even if it does lean left.
What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law - 99% Invisible guy interviews a constitutional law professor about what's happening in the headlines.
Slow Burn: A Podcast About Watergate - Things just don't change, do they

TV
West Wing Weekly - Rewatch of the show, featuring interviews with cast members and experts in the issues that the show discussed
Watching Dead - A podcast by two guys watching the Walking Dead and are Done. I don't watch anymore, but still like to hear them rip the show to shreds.
Game of Thrones Podcast - Breaks down the episodes.

Religion
Phil Vischer - Three Evangelicals discuss current events, why Christian art sucks, why pop culture isn't bad, and the current state of Evangelicalism.
Relevant - If Christianity Today is the magazine that all the Baby Boom/Graham era Evangelicals read, Relevant is the magazine that all their children are reading. If you want to know where Evangelicalism is going and what the next generation of leaders think, and if you suspect you might not be getting that from the news (you're not), this is the podcast to listen to.

Culture
Reply All - Podcast on the Internet and the culture surrounding the internet. Yes-Yes-No is always hilarious.
This American Life - Classic. Does it need an explanation?
Crimetown - In depth storytelling about the corruption and crime in Providence, RI
Science Vs. - Australian host breaks down scientific studies on hot issues, so that you don't have to.

Misc
Judge John Hodgman - Comedy podcast where John Hodgman handles disputes between multiple parties. Everyone should know both established law and what is and is not a sandwich.
99% Invisible - Short form podcast about design and the stories behind design. Absolutely fascinating.
Intelligence Squared - Debates on a variety of topics.
Heavyweight - Jonathan Goldstein (from This American Life) tries to help people work through their issues and their relationships with varying success. Some of the most moving things I've ever listened to.

I commute from one city to another at the beginning and end of my workweek (this is ending soon) and having podcasts finally made those trips not just bearable, but well used time. I started with Dan Carlin's Hardcore History and You Are Not So Smart, and have been expanding slowly ever since.

Oddly I pretty much dislike most RPG related podcasts because of the talk format. Actual play meant to illustrate a system or style of play are the most useful to me. Example: the actual play of Masks (teen super heroes) a PbtA based game, but it also helped as well made it artificial that it was the Whelmed : the Young Justice podcast team playing as the Young Justice characters with Masks.

Science Vs.: Comparing what people think or do vs. what science says or knows, and science doesn’t always win. The “Science vs. Marajuana” episode had so many reefer puns in it they have a running tally. Fun but scientific.

Myths & Legends podcast: Retelling, yes, myths and legends with a modern voice. This is about the only time I understood what the heck the deal was with the Norse myths. Ends with “creature of the week” where some magical beasties from all over are described.

Fictional: Same guy summarizing fiction, so like Cliffs Notes with personality, or Thug Reviews without explaining the underlying meaning. Just stories retold in a modern voice. They just finished up Count of Monte Cristo, which I could never get interested in, but summarized this way made me at least get why it was popular. Ends with a bit about old comic book heroes or villains that had no right existing because of how strange or pointless they were; very funny.

Lore: If you need to get depressed that what we believe in magic and monsters making us humans into monsters, this is the podcast. It deserves its high rating and Amazon Prime short series, which turns something dark into something dark with dark visuals and holy crap we did not come from a nice past. Entirely European and American, tho.

That’s all I listen to non fiction. I should listen to 99% Invisible, considering how much I bang on about design.

Speaking of banging on, here’s my list of current fiction podcasts!

Welcome to Night Vale: You all have read me praise this greatly. It’s Lovecraft by way of A Prairie Home Companion (now Welcome From Here), where black secret sheriff helicopters and unknowable blood stone circles are pretty much the norm. Mostly just silly, in a very off kilter way, but also heartwarming.

Alice Isn’t Dead: A woman becomes a trucker to find her missing wife and stumbles into a conspiracy far, far beyond her. Done by the same people as WTNV, but is about the loneliness of life on the road. Third and final season starts this year.

Within the Wires: Another WTNV production. WW2 left two thirds of the world dead and a new single world society has been formed from the destruction to stop it from happening again. The story is told via cassette tapes from a single speaker and it is strange and compelling and strange and amazing that it could be done. Season One is abosolutely worth listening to. Season two is more standard of a story, but has more world building in it.

Our Fair City: The remaining population of the known world of our near future is holed up, quite literally, in an insurance building in Hartford, Connecticut. Originally written as a series of slightly connected short for, stories, it has become a giant multi season epic tale of humanity in exactly what you’d think an insurance company as humanity’s caretakers would look like. Post-apocalyptic dystopia epic. Hartlife: The only life you ever need.

Sayer: I find new podcasts from the Q&A episodes of other podcasts. This one was from Our Fair City. Also a short form podcast, tho some seasons are more story arc than others. An asteroid hits Earth and a company launches it back into space to orbit Earth and be a staging ground for humanity’s leaving our now understandably dying planet. Be assured: There are no bees on Typhon.

The Orphans: This one I got from the Sayer crew. Far future survival story of a crashed ship on an almost abandoned planet. Season one serves as world building, and I’m hooked. Beautiful sound.

Edict Zero - FIS: How to describe this? Far future police procedural on a planet that we colonized after fleeing a dying Earth. The world feels like a world, though, messy and nuanced. Everything else would be a spoiler, except that one of the characters can be hard to take. The sound is not mixed awesomely, but the production complexity of this show is insanely great.

The Liberty Podcast: Speaking fleeing a dying Earth, this series takes place on an Earth colony in the middle of terraforming, and after a civil war a hundred years ago. It’s mostly about the safe and wealthy area which is for once not a classist high society utopia/dystopia, but a social machine that people live within. The area outside is filled with roving gangs and cannibalism because they don’t have the infrastructure to stay alive. Lots of lore, lots of world building, a nice and not black-and-white take on the order vs. chaos sci-if trope.

Wolf 359: This series was hard to finish listening to for the same reason Battlestar Galactica was: It is non stop pain to the protagonists, but the writing is solid and the voice acting is superb. Well, except for the fake Russian accent. Series starts as strange events on a space station around Wolf 359, and ends with a conspiracy against humanity by the company that sent them there. I feel this was a bit of back peddling, because this happens pretty close to or at modern day, but I think they pull it off well. Yes that’s a mild spoiler. So very mild.

The White Vault: A found footage Lovecraft story in modern day, featuring isolation and architectural discovery. Slow but well told.

Limetown: Staged as an NPR series, tho feels less fake than others I’ve tried. (Stage actors, stop being stage actors for these please!) After a small private laboratory town disappears in violence, one reporter follows the threads to find what experiments were pushing human understanding and ability.

The Bright Sessions: Another show that starts off as recorded notes, it does escape the “log” format to do more with the series. Takes place in a psychiatrist’s office where she helps troubled young adults deal with their psychic abilities, and how to hide it from the world. Takes powers as a physiological condition and not just magic brain juju. It does fall a bit to the “conastant suffering of characters” from time to time, but it’s well done so I forgive it.

Thrilling Adventure Hour: Olde Time Radio Shows done on stage with tongue placed firmly in cheek, done for comedy value. My favorites are “Sparks Nevada, Marshal on Mars” and “Beyond Belief”, but they’re all fun. It’s too bad to miss on some of the visuals, mostly actors reacting to other actors, but you’re not missing anything much from it. The audiophiles will recognize some voices.

Decoder Ring Theatre: Black Jack Justice: 1940s detective noir radio show starring “Black Jack” Justice and his partner, NOT SIDECKICK OR GIRL FRIDAY, Trixie Dixon Girl Detective. There hasn’t been anything since 2015, 67 hard-boiled episodes in, but oh is it worth it. Then there’s the audio book of how these two first met, which you should absolutely wait until you’re done with the 67 episodes.

This was the first podcast I ever listened to, discovered on the midnight audio theatre of my local NPR station.

Two fictional podcasts with a common theme of collecting and investigating records of things that don't seem entirely natural, with a narrative within the records being managed and involving the ones managing the records.

Grammar Girl: Quick & Dirty Tips
I Should Be Writing
Writing Excuses (sometimes, sometimes I get bored of the inane chatter and delete it halfway through)
Tanis
Nightvale (doesn't everyone?)

But often podcasts either cause me to really lose track of what I'm doing (and I'm so busy IRL that I need to be multi-tasking) or I lose track of the podcast. :\ Once I'm driving again, I'll probably listen to more. Right now I usually listen to them while on the bus home, but I've almost missed my stop when the former happens or I find myself reading websites when the latter happens.

The Jimquisition: video game industry critic
The No Sleep Podcast: creepypasta from Reddit read outloud.
Philosophize This: Breakdown of various philosophers through the ages and what they were trying to say.
The F Plus : Terrible things read with enthusiasm. Really weird shit like taking various pages from glove and flashlight festish forums, various Reddit sections and comments about products on Amazon. If you often wonder how depraved humanity can really be, they've probably read it. I have seriously considered mailing them various threads from this site. Because we totally deserve it.